The Ringel sisters and their children lived in adjacent apartments on Lothringerstraße
We already knew that Betty Twiasschor and her two daughters Edith and Gina were living at Hermann's old address at Lothringerstraße 4A in the late 1920s and early '30s. Today we discover from Berlin address directories that Betty's sister Rosa Schattner and her children Margot and Wolfie (Zeev) lived in 1929 and 1930 at Lotheringerstraße 4B.
Both sisters were evidently widowed already by 1929. (I have yet to learn the histories of their two husbands.) Hermann lived there himself before his marriage, which we now know was in the spring of 1922. Their mother Fanny Ringel had lived there too until her death the year before. I'm thinking that Hermann held on to the property and later set up his sisters there where they were each widowed.
Actually there is a slight anamoly with the address. In the earlier records, it is recorded as I have shown. In the later telephone directory records, the address is given as Lotheringstraße 54-4a and Lotheringstraße 54-4b. I think it is the same place but that the number 54 was added to the address some time in the mid-1920s. Also, the 4a and 4b seem to suggest adjacent apartments on the fourth floor.
I didn't know about the 54 business when I tried to find the place when I was in Berlin in 2018. Lothringerstraße had been renamed to Torstraße after the war, and it is a major avenue on the north border of the old Scheunenviertel district. At the time, I couldn't find a good candidate for No. 4, but when I look now on Apple and Google Maps, I see that Torstraße 54 is right at the place where Rosa Luxembourg Straße and Alte Schonhauser Straße come together, which was perfectly located close to Hermann's several places of business.
Mostly there are new buildings at that busy intersection today, but the image above from Google Street View shows a building at Torstraße 56 that looks like it could go back to the 1920s or before. Could that be similar to the building, or the exact right one, where our Ringels lived in two apartments on the top floor?
